Even Though It All Went Wrong
by SombraAlma
Summary: Sawyer/Kate. Some time after the Oceanic 6 are rescued, the other survivors are rescued, as well: "It's clear that this is not how you bring someone back to life but there is something called the point of no return."


**Title:** Even Though It All Went Wrong**  
Rating:** PG-13**  
Disclaimer:** Don't own them; just borrowing. I don't even own _Hallelujah_; that's all Leonard Cohen's.**  
Summary:** Sawyer/Kate. Some time after the Oceanic 6 are rescued, the other survivors are rescued, as well. _It's clear that this is not how you bring someone back to life but there is something called the point of no return._**  
Spoilers:** Up to Eggtown.**  
Notes:** I so overuse _I Do_ in fics. Oh, well. It's very overuseable!

* * *

**.it goes like this.**

When he comes back (he won't tell her how; none of them will), she offers him a place to stay because her house is certainly big enough – too big – and she remembers how it'd felt, coming back to nothing.

He shrugs and agrees in a way that says it wouldn't be his first choice, but, well, _guess I don't have nowhere else to go,_ and she hears similar words, years ago; _I ain't running, 'cause there ain't no place to go._

She's not running now, and she wonders if that's why he looks at her, sometimes, like he doesn't know who she is. (She's not sure, herself, half the time. Half the time Aaron says it twice – _Mommy...Mommy!_ - before she remembers to look up to see the block tower he's built or the dead beetle he's brought in from the driveway, cupped in his sweaty palm.)

But most of the time Sawyer doesn't look at her at all. He spends long hours at the library, coming back after dark with stacks and stacks of books. She tries joking, the first time: _what, are you going to run a bookstore from the house now?_ but he pushes past her and mutters something she doesn't understand and disappears into his bedroom, closes the door, and doesn't come out except to eat and pee until he takes the stack back to the library and returns with more.

She doesn't joke about the books again.

**.the fourth.**

He doesn't call her Freckles.

Well, she supposes that's fair – her makeup, these days, softens the marks on her face to a fair dusting, and she's no longer constantly in the sun to darken what's already there. She's not Freckles anymore – but sometimes that stings. (Turns out neither _Mommy_ nor _Kate_ fit her all that well. And maybe they never did. She's had so many names, and it's hard to keep track.)

She still calls him Sawyer, though. Or at least she does until the day Aaron picks up on the name and calls him Mr. Sawyer, and he flinches visibly and she can taste those words in her mouth, just as she'd read them aloud, once, from his child's handwriting on a tattered piece of stationery.

_No, Aaron. It's James. His name is James._

**.the fifth.**

Aaron, interestingly enough, tries harder with Sawyer than she does. (She still expects, when they accidentally brush against each other in the kitchen or the hallway, the same sizzling spark of tension that always used to be there, and when it's not, she finds it hard to try. Nothing is the same, and isn't that what she'd wanted, when she'd left?) But the little boy brings him books to read, toy cars to crash together, a soccer ball to kick. He's full of everything Sawyer is not; energy, exuberance, life. Sawyer indulges him and calls him Huey when he feels like it, and snaps at him and keeps his door closed when he doesn't, which is most of the time.

_You used to read to him, James._ She remembers an airplane seat and _Guns and Ammo_, a tree on the beach and _Watership Down._

_Lot of things I used to do, Kate._

**.the minor fall.**

Neither of them sleep much at all. He stands outside on the front stoop, smoking, and she knows better than to tell him she thought he'd have given it up for good, after years of _not_. She joins him outside, the front door propped open to the warm night, and taps a cigarette from his pack, uses his Zippo to light it.

_Don't._

His voice is gruff and he pulls the cigarette from her lips before she takes her first drag, stabs it out half-heartedly on the side of one of the white pillars. She places her hand on his chest then, more boldly than she's touched him since he's been back. She can feel his heart beating beneath her palm. _Are you alive, Sawyer? Do you even remember being alive?_

He looks at her, looks around at this house, this street, this lie. Touches her hair lightly, the straightened hair that frames her made up face. _I'm 'bout as alive as you are, I guess._

He's looking her directly in the eyes now, his boldness perhaps fueled by her own, the longest they've held each other's gaze in years. She tries to think back, back to the last time she'd truly felt alive, and suddenly she's pushing him back so he's pinned against the wall of the house, holding him there as he'd held her against the bars of a cage, a lifetime ago.

His sound of surprise is muffled by her mouth, swallowing his air, desperate clinging and claiming and maybe they can feel something other than this nothingness. It doesn't take him long to respond; he's still a man, after all, and not quite as far gone as she'd perhaps expected. He growls in her ear and presses against her, wrapping his arms around her to turn them sideways, somehow into the house and against the foyer wall.

Hands and clothes and teeth and tongues, everywhere, taking taking taking, and it's clear that this is not how you bring someone back to life but there is something called the point of no return.

They pass it too quickly.

He fucks her against the wall and she can barely feel him moving within her. Even as she tells herself to feel this – that this is pleasure and arousal, this is intimacy and _come on, Kate, you started this_ – she senses him slipping in and out of her as if she's outside of her own body. She finally feels the warm pulse of his release and she cries, shuddering, bruised.

He doesn't wipe her tears and she doesn't notice his.

In the morning, nothing has changed. He doesn't leave, but he doesn't exactly stay, either.

Maybe he'd never really been here in the first place. (It occurs to her that, since the island, she hasn't seen him smile.)

**.the major lift.**

She's coming back to the house, hauling Aaron and grocery bags and dry cleaning, and he's outside, standing in the driveway. Waiting.

There's no cigarette in his hand, and she sets Aaron down, lets him run into the house.

_Sayid thinks there's a way to get back._

That's it, no preamble. And afterwards, he smiles.

**.hallelujah.**

She breaks her parole for the first and last time the day they board Hurley's plane and fly to Fiji. And then there's a boat, and a submarine. Then a dock she almost recognizes, and it feels familiar under her feet.

Later, when it's dark, there's a house. There's a toddler sleeping in the bedroom and there's a kitchen and a soft light. She perches on the counter and his hands are on her thighs. _How long you think we can stay here and play house?_ This time it's him doing the asking.

She kisses him and tastes the wine on his tongue and maybe she's starting to feel again; his thumbs rub circles over her jeans and maybe he can feel her, too.

She doesn't know, not really (how long?), but there will be no more submarine, no more boat, no more plane. There is something called the point of no return.

**  
**_**(and even though it all went wrong  
i'll stand before the lord of song  
with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah)**_


End file.
